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A Tiny Drone Called FlyCroTug Can Lift 40 Times Its Weight

Drones are amazing and powerful but they are opposed to an impenetrable obstacle, which is the doors. This obstacle has always troubled the drone creators and the pilots, as these drones crash into the doors. But Scientists from Stanford University and EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) which is an engineering research institute funded by Swiss Government, have built a small drone which can open doors and can lift the objects 40 times its own weight.

This micro-drone is called as FlyCroTug, the creators of this drone were inspired by common wasp’s ability to lift and move heavy objects across distances. According to Mark Cutkosky, the Fletcher Jones Chair in the School of Engineering at Stanford, the inspiration of the approach were wasps, as they can fly quickly to a piece of food and if it too heavy to lift, they drag it along the ground. While Cutkosky and the team were studying about Wasp’s ratio of flight-related muscle to the total of its total mass, they resolved that any drone which is created to imitate the insect would need multiple carrying options. In that case, FlyCroTug has three: winches, gecko grippers and micro spine.

According to Dario Floreano, a professor of robotics at EPFL, with this work, they wanted to show that the small drones who are able to anchor to the environment and collaborating with other drones can perform the tasks assigned to humanoid robots or large machines. These drones are capable of opening a door, in an experiment, one drone wrapped itself to the handle of the door and another one pulled on the door. In the next step, scientists need to improve the ability of these drones to work together, so that they can work together in collaborative projects.

Searching for new things, she has found herself as a writer. In the midst of day to day routine life, she finds her peace in reading and painting. With a passion for reading, she believes in learning new things to add value to her own as well as to the lives of others around her.